Presently, many people use devices such as walking canes or crutches to facilitate their movement. Walking canes and crutches can fall from or be dropped by the user, or can fall from any given place of rest. Once they fall on the ground, it could be very challenging for the user to pick them up, because this requires the user to bend over to reach the ground. Normally, those who require a walking cane or a crutch to move around are those with compromised or impaired physical conditions. Bending over to reach the ground could be very difficult for them, if not impossible.
There have been some attempts to solve this problem. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,826,605, 6,039,064, and 6068007 disclosed a design which uses a series of complicated mechanicals to raise an arm when a cane or crutch falls on the ground. The draw back of this design is that it is too complicated, involves too many mechanical parts, and may not be very reliable. Another attempt to solve this problem is described in the paper “Intelligent walking stick”. This paper disclosed a walking stick with three prongs that can open up similar to the spokes on an umbrella. The opening up mechanism is based on voice command. When the user speaks a phrase which matches a prerecorded voice signature, the three prongs are opened, resulting in two prongs touching the ground and raising the cane, and the third prong sticking in the air for the user to pick up. This design requires sophisticated voice recognition, which may not work very well in a noisy environment, such as in the streets or in a shopping plaza. Moreover, this design requires three prongs to be installed on a walking device, which complicates the design of the walking device.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved device to facilitate the convenient retrieval of a walking cane or a crutch that is dropped or falls on the ground.